My Favorite Thing About God

A large part of the last three years of my life have been spent thinking about and discovering what is now my favorite thing about God - Redemption. He is Redeemer. I can't begin to describe how much I love that about Him. And maybe it takes really discovering the depth of your fallenness ~ I mean really getting down into the deep, dark pit of our depravity ~ before you can be, just, stunned by His redemption. Because until you see how hopeless you are, you can't fully appreciate that He somehow takes that mess, and turns it into something beautiful.

Redemption is like a mosaic. It takes the broken, jagged, hopelessly shattered pieces of something, and uses them to create a masterpiece so much more beautiful than the original creation. It is pain and hurt and sorrow turned into healing and strength and joy.

When everything looks hopeless, when I've messed everything up so bad I can't even figure out where I am or sometimes who I am anymore - then He takes it all and weaves it into this thing of unspeakable beauty. And it just leaves me amazed, without a single thing to say. He is so much bigger, and this story of my life that is unfolding is so much better, because He is constantly working redemption throughout it. When I fail, when I don't seem to have enough to give, when I really did try my hardest but still everything falls apart - I can just beg Him to redeem it all, to somehow bring good and beauty and glory for Himself out of it all...and He does, because that is who He is. Beauty for Ashes. What an incredible God.

We knew it as a wrong turn
We couldn't know the things we'd gain
When we reach the other border
We look out way down past the road we came from

Looking at redemption
Hidden in the landscape
Of loss and love and fire and rain
Never would have come this way
Looking at redemption
In the eyes of sorrow, eyes of rage
What a sordid histories they played
The drama of redemption
Redemption

"Redemption" - Jars of Clay

The Low-Down

Welcome to my Campus Crusade adventure! Thanks for following - I hope that this experience proves as interesting for you to read as it is for me to live! I want to use this post as an official introduction to this blog and my life for at least the next year.

The Adventure I will be working with Campus Crusade for Christ at the University of Tennessee beginning in August. I have the incredible opportunity to spend my time hanging out with college students, getting to know them, talking about life and faith and meaning and our purpose here on this tiny ball in space. I get to teach a group of girls from the Bible, one of my favorite things to do! I get to be stretched as I learn to share who Jesus is more openly and intentionally. I'm a lot of excited, and a little intimidated too!

However, before I can pack up everything I own and move to Knoxville, I have to get together a team of people who will partner with me in this endeavor - both by praying for me, as well as supporting me financially. So I am spending my summer in my beautiful hometown, meeting with people to share my vision for ministry and building my team of partners.

The Low-Down I have passed the halfway mark in my support raising! (yay!)
This is awesome, but I still have a LOT left. (boo.)
BUT I serve a FAITHFUL and MIGHTY God who provides in stinkin' awesome ways! He has worked in some really incredible ways so far, and I am trusting Him to continue over the next 6 weeks! (but if you want to be praying about it, that really wouldn't hurt! In fact, it would help. A Lot.)

So there you go, the beginnings of my Crusade adventure in a nutshell.

~Welcome!

Stillness

It is late. I have an early appointment tomorrow morning, but I'm not quite ready for sleep. It is a quiet night. It rained hard this afternoon, satisfying the earth and leaving everything fresh and renewed. There is no restlessness in this night. The air is cool, and even the crickets are quiet. Sometimes silence and stillness embody greater worship that the loudest praises.

I will be writing of my journey with Campus Crusade for Christ at UT on this blog, and it probably would have been smart and logical and appropriate to write a big explanation of what I'll be doing in the fall, and what I'm doing now, for my first post...

But tonight the earth is quiet. There is a breeze blowing through my window, and the creation herself invites me to join in quiet reverence of the Creator. And so I will walk outside, feel the wind on my face, smell the dampness of the earth and the incredible fragrance of Smoky Mountain summers, and rejoice in the paradox that is my existence - such insignificance, just a breath, and then gone; yet made utterly significant by the One who brings the rain.